A central Ohio man who disappeared while on a business trip in the South has been found dead in
Alabama.

The body of David M. Cupps, 53, of Sunbury, was discovered in the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer,
said John Mehr, special agent in charge of the western district of the Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation.

The Birmingham News newspaper reported that a man's body was found outside of a motel on
Wednesday and that authorities began working to identify it. Mehr said yesterday afternoon that the
dead man was Cupps, but he would not say how he had died.

Cupps was last heard from when he talked with his wife by phone on Monday afternoon from
Vicksburg, Miss. He was a safety inspector for a company that designs and digs wells and had made
the Mississippi trip several times on a project, said Heather Ross, 31, his stepdaughter.

Cupps said he was on his way to his motel during the Monday call. But he never registered at the
motel and didn't return home on a scheduled flight to Columbus on Tuesday afternoon, his family
said.

The Louisiana fugitives - Ricky Wedgeworth and Darian "Drake" Pierce - were discovered driving
Cupps' rental vehicle when they were pulled over by a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper on Tuesday
night in Jackson, Tenn. The SUV had been reported missing after Cupps failed to return it to the
rental-car company.

Wedgeworth and Pierce jumped from the SUV and escaped from the trooper on foot. Wedgeworth, 36,
was serving time for armed robbery, and Pierce, 33, was in prison for attempted murder.

Authorities continue to search for the two in the Jackson area, Mehr said. It appears to be the
most-recent stop for Wedgeworth and Pierce after they traveled from Louisiana to Mississippi to
Alabama, he said.

Ross said that authorities flew her mother, Della Marie Cupps, to Tennessee yesterday. The
family learned that Cupps had been identified just before authorities announced it.

Cupps had three other daughters and eight grandchildren, Ross said. Another grandchild is due
next month, she said.

He liked to camp and take his grandchildren fishing and loved to sing karaoke, she said. He
would not have put up a fight if he came across the two Louisiana fugitives.

"If they had just asked for the car, he would have given it to them," she said.